Tag: Volunteering

Fred Zaidman, who had recently added helping the homeless to his list of volunteer passions, went into action, soon securing a commitment from Bristol Farms for 75 burritos for a breakfast for the homeless that The City School, a charter...

We learned from the wee hours of the morning until late at night, but Torah study is incomplete without chessed, or acts of kindness. This was a lesson I learned while a student at Midreshet Harova, a Masa Israel-accredited seminary in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Thirty hours ago, I left a country whose Jewish population went from 300,000 to 3,000 in the past 60 years. I walked the narrow paths between the houses where these Jews used to live, I breathed in the air of the synagogues where they prayed every day, three times a day. Over and...

A network of volunteers from many of the nation's leading law firms, recruited through a Los Angeles initiative, is helping to write what appears to be the last chapter in the long and contentious history of reparations to Holocaust...

Camp Hess Kramer broke my young and fertile heart. It was an instance of pubescent love that evolved into unrequited passion. For eight years, I frolicked in the crisp Malibu breeze, danced maniacally to Israeli folk songs and celebrated the Sabbath each Friday at dusk. It was eight...

In 1969, a group of college students staged a protest at the premiere gathering of the organized Jewish community, demanding more say and more attention to issues that mattered to them -- such as Soviet Jewry, Jewish identity and culture. They also wanted a younger voice to be...

Daniel, a 24-year-old UCLA student, has gotten under my skin. I met him a month ago when I followed Rabbi Yossi Carron on his rounds through Men's Central Jail
and Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. Daniel had a few more days to serve on the six-month sentence...

On Sunday morning, July 16, after spending a restful Shabbat with his family, my 20-year-old soldier son found out that instead of going on an educational trip to Yad
Vashem with his army buddies, he was to be sent to the small moshav of Netua on the Lebanese border.

Any organization's program and operational decisions should stem from the philosophy, beliefs and vision that are its reasons for being in the first place. These basic values, however, are often assumed, yet rarely articulated.

As Carolyn Blashek knows only too well, good things come in small packages. The founder and motivating force behind Operation Gratitude, a nonprofit organization that sends care packages to American troops overseas, Blashek serves as an inspiring testimony to one woman's dedication...

To try to figure out all the volunteer projects social worker Karen Gilman is involved in -- and where she finds the time to do them all -- is to sift through a complex maze of stories of individuals who need help, or organizations that need help, or a volunteer staff that...

On Feb. 17, David Nathanson hosted a silent auction at his L.A. home for more than 100 young executives – and special guest 5th District L.A City Councilman Jack Weiss – to benefit nonprofit Yemin Orde Youth Village in Israel.

The call for "Jewish continuity" sounded by American Jewish communal leaders more than a decade ago as an antidote to rising intermarriage rates and other signs of weakening identity has spawned a veritable industry aimed at making American Jews more Jewish. There has been an...

At Sinai Akiba Academy recently, Bryna Vener vigorously conducted close to 100 first- through-eighth-graders in a passionate rendition of "Hava Nagila" as students danced in their seats. If the atmosphere was celebratory, it was because the assembly was a dress rehearsal for the...

The Tu B'Shevat seder, with its many fruit and nuts, challenges us to reconsider our usual diets, and the recommended Jewish diet. While the FDA recommends a diet high in grains, rich in nutrients and low in saturated fats, Judaism recommends a diet high in holiness, rich in...

David Levinson, 44, has written for television, theater and feature films. He and his wife Ellen Herman, also a television writer, have crafted a good life from an unforgiving business, with a home in Hancock Park and three growing children, who, he informed me over lunch this week,...

I recently joined some 30 volunteers from a dozen countries as part of Sar-El Volunteers For Israel to work with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). As a Christian Zionist on his third visit to Israel this year, I was mostly united in purpose with the others who came at the outset of...

Back in Hollywood's Golden Age, a radio host asked director
Mark Sandrich who, in his opinion, was the most alluring woman in Hollywood.
"That's easy," said Sandrich, who directed such stars as Ginger Rogers and
Claudette Colbert. "My wife, Freda."

I have spent hundreds of hours volunteering at my children's
school and I am an active member of the parent council. My kids love the school
and would hate to leave, but there seems to be a problem with loose lips. After
discussing my...

Is our national health care system beyond cure? Rabbi David
Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and Dr.
Alexandra M. Levine, medical director of the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer
Center and Hospital, believe that the Jewish community can take a...

In many ways, 26-year-old Deborah Jennings is typical of the young volunteers at the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) in the Fairfax district. She's a passionate, college-educated individual who volunteers four to eight hours each week for Talkline, a counseling hotline...

The High Holy Days are always a special time of year, not in a warm and fuzzy way, but in a meaningful, introspective manner, a time when our awareness of how we treat others - in addition to how we treat ourselves - is heightened. This is the time of year when we take stock of the...

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